Feeding the world

Climate change and a rapidly growing global population will soon force people to rethink how – and what – they consume.

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(photo credit:OURIA TADMOR)

Israel, 2050. The country bears little resemblance to what it once was. Since
the turn of the century, annual rainfall has plummeted, with just seven of the
past 50 winters defined as “rainy” or “very rainy.” In the south, the Negev
Desert has crept ever northward, and the once green areas of Beit Shemesh and
Ashkelon are now a solid shade of brown year round.

It has been two
decades since the coastal and mountain aquifers were in use, and Lake Kinneret
hasn’t been considered “full” since 2003. Even in the lush Galilee, large swaths
of greenery have faded due to the chronic lack of rain.

Israel is not the only country to experience such drastic changes, and the
shifting weather patterns worldwide have wreaked havoc with the world’s food
supply. In the United States, the freak hurricanes that pummeled the American
heartland in 2027, 2031, 2037 and 2045 caused massive flooding, and midwinter
ice storms have become a near annual occurrence.

The weather patterns
have also had an impact on the international food trade. While the changes
haven’t destroyed America’s farming industry, the US is no longer able to export
food. Closer to home, Israeli farms still produce enough to feed the more than
11 million citizens of Israel, but not the nine million Palestinians of the West
Bank and Gaza Strip. For a while, from 2020- 2035, Turkey picked up some of the
slack, providing food aid to the Palestinians as well as Lebanon, Syria and
Jordan, but a series of massive fires and winter floods brought that country’s
agriculture sector to its knees.

Sounds impossi ble? Perhaps. Then again,
perhaps not. Scientists at Israel’s Agricultural Research Organization (ARO),
the research division of the Ministry of Agriculture, located at Beit Dagan near
Ben-Gurion Airport, say climate change, overpopulation and Western consumption
habits will combine to create a food crisis in the coming decades. In short, a
hotter, drier world will produce less food and an exploding global population –
expected to hit 9 billion by mid-century – will make those food resources a
precious commodity.

According to Dr. Sonny Ramaswamy, director of the
National Institute of Food and Agriculture, a branch of the United States
Department of Agriculture, Western governments and research agencies are trying
now to plan for the coming crisis, focusing on a combination of scientific
intervention in nature and rethinking Western habits of consumption.

“I’d
say that for the next five to ten years, we won’t have to worry about feeding
the world,” Ramaswamy tells The Jerusalem Report. “Current agriculture patterns
and technologies will allow us to continue producing enough food to feed
everybody on the planet over the next decade, but it’s not going to continue
indefinitely. Our current methods of production, transportation, cooling and
storage will not be sufficient in another 20 or 30 years.”

Speaking at a
conference entitled “Increasing Future Food Production: Challenges and
Opportunities for the New Era” at ARO, Ramaswamy said the exploding global population will have a double
impact: There will be more mouths to feed than ever before, and human
communities will encroach on formerly agricultural lands.

This process
will be exacerbated around the world. Arid and semi-arid countries such as
Israel will have to contend with a further depletion of already scarce water
resources.

Other countries will have to deal with other weather-related
challenges that will limit agricultural output.

Ramas wamy urges world
governments to focus on two main areas to deal with the impending crisis:
science and infrastructure.

He says agricultural scientists must focus
their research on achieving maximum “crop per drop,” and Western consumers
should rethink their purchasing habits.

“We have been blessed over the
past 75 years by a type of economic prosperity that is almost unprecedented in
human history. Of course, that is something to be thankful for, but there
is a down side to it as well. Our societies are extremely wasteful. Our
supermarkets encourage us to buy in bulk, but that means people buy more than
they need and eventually throw out the extra. As a result, about half the food
that is purchased in the United States is thrown in the garbage without being
consumed. The day is coming when we will not be able to be so carefree about
waste.”

In a spotless lab at the Volcani Center, as the ARO is popularly
known, Dr. Hinanit Koltai, a researcher at the ARO’s Department of Ornamental
Horticulture, oversees a series of experiments to increase both plant yield and
durability. As she examines an olive tree sapling she’s injected with hormone
treatment, she says the treatment allows her to control when the tree will
flower, and also help create a genetically stronger tree that will cope well
with Israel’s changing climate.

“There is no question that the climate
around us is getting drier,” she tells The Report. “The challenge we face is how
to adapt existing agricultural products to the changing environment. The main
bulk of my research focuses on water use – I’m creating strains of fruit trees
that will use a fraction of the water to produce superior produce to the
indigenous species, let’s say olives, that we currently have,” she
says.

“Furthermore, by controlling and treating the saplings and
combining genes from a variety of plants, we can create genetically strong trees
that are resistant not only to drought conditions, but also to harmful pests and
bugs.”

Dr. Uri Kushnir, Koltai’s colleague and head of the Volcani
Center’s wheat research and development lab, concurs. While the Torah may say
that man shall not live by bread alone, Kushnir says the commercial development
of wheat over the past century has wreaked havoc on mankind’s staple
food.

“I call it the ‘browning of the green revolution,’” he tells The
Report with a smile.

“The modern, high-yield strain of cultivated wheat
consists of relatively few genotypes, as opposed to traditional wheat species
that contained a rich variety of genotypes. That has led to an erosion of the
wheat gene pool, which in turn has led to two major problems. Today’s
wheat plants are very susceptible to new germs and diseases that are cropping up
as climates change, and we have reached a performance plateau. With the methods
and materials we’ve got today, there is really no way to boost performance.
Global wheat production is really pretty much maxed out.”

To illustrate
the current state of wheat vulnerability, Kushnir points to three areas of the
Middle East that historically led people to refer to the region as the “fertile
crescent”: Iran, Turkey and Egypt. All three, he says, have had flourishing
wheat industries in past, as well as climates that turned once-fertile areas
arid, and once-temperate climates that have seen temperature swings in both
directions.

Kushnir says Israel is a prime laboratory for wheat research
because disparate climates lend themselves to a wide variety of wheat species –
more than 20 species grow wild throughout the country. By focusing on the
genetic makeup of as many species as possible, researchers have isolated the
individual genes that make strong species strong and weak species weak, and have
created a new gene pool that can withstand diseases such as yellow rust, a
variety of fungus that is at least as prolific as the majority of wheat species
currently in wide use.

Kushnir resolutely dismisses any suggestion that
genetically modulated products are unsafe, stating unequivocally that the
modulated products pose no health risks to the general public, and in fact
stronger, higher-yielding agricultural products will be essential to ensuring
food security in Israel and abroad for generations to come.

Walking
through a maze of refrigerators and laboratory experiments measuring optimal
storage, Dr. Amnon Lichter, chairman of Volcani’s Department of Postharvest
Science stresses that Western scientists and political leaders must encourage
the developing world to invest in the infrastructure that will cut waste and
ensure that food makes it from the field to the table intact. But, he says,
there is only so much the West can do.

“Our lab developed an appliance to
rinse fresh produce,” says Lichter. “We found that spraying the freshly picked
crops with room temperature water, brushing and drying them helped extend shelf
life for peppers, melon, mango, avocado, corn, many citrus fruits, sweet potato
and some strains of tomato. It’s a terrific invention, but all we can do once
we’ve created it is push developing countries to invest in the technology. Our
rinser is used by farmers in New Zealand, Holland, Morocco, Egypt, Nigeria and
Indonesia, but there are so many other countries that could benefit from it.”

Lichter says one of his other research interests
focuses on using plant pathology to retard the ripening process for high-loss
fruits, such as strawberries and bananas, so farmers can pick the fruit early
and sell when it is ready to eat. That calls for applying a variety of molds and
germs to the fruit to see what effect they have.

That sounds scary, and
indeed it can be, but not always. “Take the E. coli bacteria, for example. Yes,
some strains of the bacteria are harmful, like E. coli O157:H7. But other
strains of it can be used to extend the useful lives of many fruits and
vegetables, so we are working to see how to best adapt and use those organisms,”
Lichter says.

Ultimately, there seems to be a consensus that while
science has a critical role to play in ensuring food security for future
generations, Western norms will have to change in order to ensure food
availability for all. While developing countries must build postharvest
infrastructure – cooling and transportation facilities, for example – it is up
to Western countries to battle overconsumption and waste.

One obstacle to
meeting that challenge will be simple economics. Currently, economies of scale
dictate that supermarket chains in developed countries offer two-for-one
specials and discounted bulk purchases for cheaper prices than individual
purchases.

Thus, customers are “forced” to overbuy because it is cheaper
than the alternative of purchasing exact amounts needed for
consumption.

That problem appears to be easier to tackle in Israel than
in some Western markets, because the supermarket culture in Israel is still
somewhat new. As recently as the late 1980s, many Israelis did the majority of
their shopping at outdoor markets such as Mahane Yehuda in Jerusalem and Tel
Aviv’s Carmel Market. Because produce there is not packaged, customers doing
their weekly shopping are more likely to consider what they will need for that
week and buy accordingly. It is no coincidence that the expansion of supermarket
shopping over the past two decades has led to a similar expansion of
waste.

And some experts believe that the business community, like it or
not, will eventually be forced to deal with this issue, just like the general
population.

Marina Montedoro, the vice chairwoman of JPI-FACCE, a
European Commission program dedicated to meeting the challenges of global
agriculture, food security and climate change, says political strategies must be
developed on local, national and international levels to encourage what she
calls “responsible consumption.” This effort, she maintains, must be
multidisciplinary, involving policy makers, the business community and farmers,
as well as the demand chain. “We need a mix of policies but if we don’t educate
consumers to buy more intelligently and to consume healthily, there is no way we
can win this battle.”

Ultimately, Montedoro says there is another factor
that will play a major role in the fight to curtail waste in the West:
obesity.

With nearly half of all Americans overweight or obese, and
rising obesity rates in Europe, Israel and other developed countries, she says
the economics of health care will eventually force governments to rein in
spending in the private sector.

“Of course, I think everyone would prefer
to encourage people to change their habits in a positive way, to make good
choices for the benefit of the whole world. But the current situation is
unsustainable in the long run, and governments are going to eventually be forced
to deal with this crisis one way or another. Our goal is to try and make sure
they do it before it is too late.”

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